Computer virtualization is a technique that involves encapsulating a physical computing machine platform into virtual machine(s) executing under control of virtualization software on a hardware computing platform or “host.” A virtual machine provides virtual hardware abstractions for processor, memory, storage, and the like to a guest operating system. The virtualization software, also referred to as a “hypervisor”, includes one or more virtual machine monitors (VMMs) to manage the virtual machine(s).
A virtualization management server can be used to manage a group of hosts, each executing virtual machines. The virtualization management server can be used to enable various multi-virtual machine features, such as disaster recovery, high-availability, resource pooling, clustering, and the like. If the virtualization management server fails, the features managed by the virtualization management server can be degraded or inoperable. For example, if a virtualization management server that manages disaster recovery for a group of virtual machines fails, the disaster recovery feature will be inoperable. As such, the virtual machines will not be protected by the intended disaster recovery scheme until the virtualization management server is recovered.